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Tea is the world's most widely consumed beverage after water, valued at billions of pounds each year. In the last video, I showed you how drinking green tea after eating garlic can help get rid of bad breath. But how about drinking green tea without garlic to get rid of bad breath?
There has been a lot of research into the effects of green tea on different aspects of oral health. For example, green tea appears to be just as effective in reducing plaque as chlorhexidine, and chlorhexidine seems to be the gold standard. Green tea is also safer. Chlorhexidine has so many side effects, including tooth discoloration, increased tartar build-up, loss of taste, and sometimes damage to the inner lining of the teeth, that it should not be used for more than a short period of time. On the other hand, drinking green tea appears to have some good side effects.
Tea consumption has been linked to longevity as it is less associated with cardiac death, heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes. Increasing tea consumption by 3 cups (720 ml) per day reduces the risk of premature death from all causes by 24%. This equates to approximately 2 additional years of life. The longevity link extends to both green and black tea, but the per-cup effect is greater for the green.
Comparing the antibacterial efficacy of green tea and chlorhexidine mouthwash against cavity-related bacteria in children with severe infantile cavities, this study found that green tea mouthwash was superior to chlorhexidine. But this study found the opposite. Chlorhexidine removed about 95% of spoilage bacteria, compared to about 70% for green tea. However, you can reduce the concentration by half just by rinsing with water. Therefore, the effectiveness of green tea as a mouthwash in terms of tooth protection has not been proven. But what about bad breath?
The effects of green tea on bad breath have certainly been known since early times, probably due to the deodorizing activity of certain antioxidant polyphenols. But you won't know until you actually test it.
The study found that sucking green tea tablets reduced smelly breath compounds. But who sucks tea pills? Here I compared green tea to breath mints, chewing gum, and parsley oil, and green tea seemed to help. However, it did not reach statistical significance. But again, this is not about drinking or slurping green tea, but rather sprinkling green tea powder on people's tongues. This study used real tea and found that rinsing with green tea after one minute was no better than rinsing with water.
great. But what about chronic use over time? This is the research I was looking for. A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial in which people rinsed their mouths with a green tea mouthwash or a placebo mouthwash of similar appearance and taste twice a day for one month. And by the end of the month, smelly bad breath compounds had decreased by nearly 40% in the green tea group, compared to close to 10% in the placebo group.
Conclusion: A systematic review of the effectiveness of tea tree in reducing levels of bad breath concluded that green tea mouthwash may actually reduce bad breath. But they don't think there's enough evidence for dentists to recommend it. This is due to the lack of sufficient randomized clinical studies. However, green tea mouthwash may be a good treatment chosen along with other bad breath treatments such as tongue scraping to achieve better clinical results.
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